Japanese children continue to kill themselves at ever earlier ages, the latest case being a 12-year-old girl who apparently opted to hurl herself to her death rather than face the prospect of not handing in her homework on time.

The incident occurred in Kumamoto city, where a 12-year-old girl in the 6th grade was found collapsed outside her home, having apparently thrown herself 7m down from a third floor window.

She survived the fall with severe injuries, but remains comatose in critical condition.

The attempt occurred the day before school recommenced after summer break, and she had just told her family that “I don’t want to go back to school as I haven’t finished my homework.” Police are investigating the case as a possible suicide.

There has been a certain amount of speculation as to just why she might have considered her homework a grave enough matter to kill herself over, assuming it is indeed the real reason she did not want to go back to school.

Not many good things one can say about the Japanese school system except you should consider yourself fortunate it's not in your country.
But really there is something very wrong here.
Japan has not produced many Burt Rutan, Bill Gates,Thomas Edison, or Elon Musk types but considering it's economy it should have.
Why doesn't Japan have stories of garage startups like Apple making it big and beating the establishment or of startups who pushed the envelope and bucked the trends like Spacex?
I think it's because if you don't fit in they make you conform the only outlet for such people in Japan seems to be the video game and Anime industries.

@anon 17:54 yeah, taking random humanities and Japan studies courses in Uni has taught me the extent at which the parents, the government, and even the children themselves go to in order to succeed even though like you said, theyre pretty much set up for a white collar job for life.

...and America needs to actually start trusting that students aren't retarded and actually give them some more to shoot for. Get dodgeball the fuck back into elementary school so that games teach them if they are bad at physical sports and have no recourse but to accept it and do something they are good at, or get stronger and faster and be better than the rest. God forbid younger life represent and allegory for older life.

Japan just needs to unfuck its perceptions on work as a whole. Sadly this article IS an allegory for its adult life. This girl is merely an overachiever. ...or I guess in their corporate mindsets, an utter failure because she didn't succeed.

i loved how at my school, they had students get other students to not take the sats

that said, american schools need to get good teachers, not ones that are burnt out on helping kids, i had to many of them, where their classes blew, but when they had a study hall or were outside of teaching, they were decent people.

they also need to stop focusing on getting your ass a job, o yea, that was fun, a 1 year long required class that was all about getting that factory job, and crushing any remaining hope you have of not having a fucking shitty job. the class went so far as to tell you collage rarely works, and you will most likely still end up in a shitty job, just 4 years behind the rest.

than after that, another year long class all about how the government works, how its infallible... guess which two classes almost made me take a 5th year of highshcool.

It is a breeze because the bar is so fucking low. USA goes over shit in the 12th grade that other countries learn in the 8th. I went to High School in the USA for my 12th year and some people could not even read English properly in class.

Agreed, Anonymous 21:38. My parents realized real quickly that homework was busywork and told the teachers "No homework. If he gets stuck on something at home, we have no way to help him unless we are lucky enough to remember stuff from classes we took 20 years ago!"

Homework is just another codename for busywork that teachers lump on children in order to keep them from playing as children do at home.

When I had kids, I told the teachers flat out when they complained about my children not doing homework "Hey, that shit is busywork! You try to penalize them for not doing it, expect a lawsuit against the school!"

To quote uncle Buck though I'm changing the age in the quote.
But six or twelve it's the same BS for kids in Japan.
"I don't think I want to know a 12 year-old who isn't a dreamer, or a sillyheart. And I sure don't want to know one who takes their student career seriously."

It's not just Japan. Korea has the same problem, as do many other countries I'm sure. I find it disgusting that many parents in Korea look down on games as bad influence. Here's a tip to all these parents:

If your child is addicted to games and shunning responsibilites, look for the reasons that are "causing" these actions.

A good chunk of the cause of gaming addiction is Korea's education system. In the US, elementary school kids go to school for about 8 hours a day, spend 30-60 minutes on homework, then spend the rest of their time playing with their friends and family.

In Korea, homeworks alone can take hours to complete, then they have to take additional classes and tutoring that take up another several hours a day. Elementary kids have to put up with tremendous amount of stress from the education system alone. And when these kids finally have some free time, they can't hang out with their friends since they also have to study. They can't hang out with their family since they're also busy. So these kids turn to TV and games as the only choice left. Considering they deal with so mich stress and games let them escape that, of course a lot of them have a hard time letting go.

Then when kids spend too much time with games trying to relieve stress, what do the parents do? They blame games for ruining the kids' lives and prevent them from relieving said stress... then they tell them go study...

Sadly, majority of parents out there don't realize this and are just quick to blame things in front of them, instead of being smart and figuring out what the cause of their kids' gaming addiction is.

By God, there are people who still fall for that?
The police are hiding again the motive!
Surely there must be a case of bullying or sexually molested.
Just kill yourself for so little, a homework?
Meanwhile the government cares about tattooed people and exaggerated fashion!
And bullying is treated as a national sport ..

america is a country based on bullying. you got most of your resources from bullying other countries so how could you american foreigners understand a person who has been bullied when your culture is steeped in bullying???

Its not just that. Teachers these days are lazier than ever! Most of the assignments they give are just "Find these 50 definitions in the back of the book and write them down." or "Here's a worksheet."

Seriously, the only reason they haven't been replaced with computers is because machines have trouble recognizing kid's handwriting and spelling errors.

In North America, grade school is really easy, and then university is like a sledgehammer to the face. In Japan, grade school is the difficulty level of NA University (for each grade's age) and University is a breeze. University is Japan is pretty much for you to get in so you can learn a little, then use the university's name to get a job.

It's great tool in regular case of single teacher with multiple students. First of all it adds practice, even more, practice that you are doing yourself like in real life, not being guided like in classroom. Second it allows everyone to finish at their own speed – everyone thinks at different pace and it's quite hard to make regular group practice without half of the class yawning and the other half blinking with no idea of what is going on and trying to copy from the neighbor.

On the other hand I feel really bad for children so stressed over homework to even turn to suicide. My guess the reason is home and parents because if the child has good support at home no matter what is happening at school he won't be pressed to breakdown (if things are really bad – would be transfered to another school).

Finish at home at my own pace? Hell when i was at school I was like fuck group practice. I finished b4 every one in class and the teacher didn't like it my reaction why the hell should i slow my pace to their level. I am not wasting my time to stay with the class i like my work done and over with as for homework with a little talk to my guidance counselor and my principal who use to be my history teacher i got homework removed and placed as school work. Never had homework ever not even in 2nd grade did it on the bus don't feel school work should be at home. I rather hang with friends and play video games all day btw my GPA was 3.83 or A with elevated classes in high school was 2nd best unfortunately girl beat me with a 3.91

Or for those people who don't actually need it, homework is just forced labor, which if you refuse to do can result in failure of the entire class. You learned the material, but because you didn't do the extra work the children who actually need it did, you fail. Thankfully my teachers figured that fact out and passed me along my classed with a D- because they saw my tests coming back with A grades despite never turning in a homework assignment. The bottom line is, it's an antiquated system that desperately needs revision, and should not be allowed to count for enough to auto-fail a student that doesn't do it.

I made it a habbit to stay longer in school and do my homework, once im in front of my computer or console I cant bring myself to do it.
Sometimes I wasn't at home until late in the evening, that's bullshit.. This has to change.

Homework is tedious and no one likes to do them. But seriously, homework does help memorize things. It's there to force children to actually rework the stuff they've done in class.

In University, where there's no homework mostly, I really noticed how my grades went down quite a bit. And in the few courses that did require me to do homework, I've felt learning for the exams was easier and took a lot less time and earned me better grades because I memorized a whole lot more than without HW.

Hands down, would you actually revise stuff at home you weren't forced to?

That is actually dependent on how a person learns. Some people learn better through repetition and homework helps them learn the material. Other people (like me) don't learn that way and requiring homework just makes it harder on those people.

Just for the diversity, i'd go with "overcaring" parents, who made sure to remind the girl all the time that her grades were the most important thing ever.

P.S. But even if it is bullying, it's still guilt of the dysfunctional family: it is family (mother, father) which should stand by their kid in times of trouble. Not seeing the trouble is no excuse - but sign that parents do not really bother to communicate with their kids.